The Glass Town Game, Page 28

  “Is that where you think you picked us up? Angria?”

  “There have been theories.” Dr. Home tried to interrupt, but Charlotte and the wooden soldier were off and yelling.

  “Where else? That’s where the train goes. Glass Town Royal Express Main Line! South Angrian Loop!” Crashey thumped his flask twice on the deck.

  Charlotte raised her voice. “Haworth! Yorkshire! England! You were there, Crash. Where breathers come from!”

  “Oh,” Sergeant Crashey said quietly. He plunked down his head in his hands and grinned. Charlotte reminded herself to ask the Quartermaster to make up a pair of eye patches for the poor man. The ragged bandage looked too wretched. “Oh, that.” He scratched his chin. “It did look a bit dullerydag for Angria. But I never have traveled much. What do I know? We only went trainchasing after Brunty to make the arrest in the name of the Duke. Ended up in the wilderness, is all.”

  Dr. Home sipped from Crashey’s flask. “It has long been theorized by . . . well, by abstract thinkers . . . that Glass Town and Gondal are not the only . . . ahem . . . realities in the cosmos.”

  “Theories . . .” Crashey shrugged. “Can’t kick off your shoes at the end of the day without whacking a theory in the head with ’em. Always liked the one Dr. Home’s referindexing, though. Always thought the world’d be a prettier place if it were true.”

  Dr. Home stroked his gaunt leather cheek. “The theory goes that new worlds are being created all the time. That there are as many worlds floating in the void as there are votive candles alight in St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

  “And how are these worlds created? In your theory, I mean,” Charlotte asked.

  “Oh, it’s not my theory. My philosophy is much more . . . pragmatic. But as far as I understand it, there’s no special rite or ritual. New worlds just . . . come on in the dark like fireflies. Every time a choice between two roads is made, a universe fires up to follow each path. Every time a war begins or ends. Every time a child huddles up in his room imagining stories for his dolls. Nothing is too small to create a world, the theory goes. Each beautiful in its way. Some as similar to ours as twins. Some so strange that they would be, to us, as we are to lantern fish under the sea. Some even speculate that what we call heaven and hell are merely other worlds such as this, and death is but a swift carriage from here to there.”

  “There must be another way to travel between these places,” Charlotte said. “Other than by dying or . . . or by . . .” Charlotte’s voice died in her throat. This was the moment. She could either say it all at last or keep mum. Would they believe her? Would it matter if they didn’t? Did it actually matter at all that they’d made this world in their little house above the churchyard in Haworth? Crashey and Bravey and Wellington and Lord Byron and Leftenant Gravey and Brunty the Stonking Great Tome and sweet, vain Ginevra Bud, and wonderful Bestminster were all just as real as Tabitha or Aunt Elizabeth or Papa. Had she any right to tell them they were only toys and games and stories? Did it really matter, in the end, if they were? Everybody was somebody’s toy or game or story. Everybody was made by someone else, even if it was only their mother and father. It didn’t make them any less real.

  A savage pinch snapped Charlotte out of her thoughts and back to the roaring sea and the racing ship. A pinch worthy of Branwell. Emily had crowded in while she was off in the wilds of her own mind. She hadn’t even seen her coming. The doctor and the Sergeant waved hullo and went on arguing the finer points of theoretical planes of existence, each trying to out-lecture the other.

  “Don’t you dare,” Emily hissed, and pinched her sister again. This time she got her bony fingers underneath the velvet officer’s coat. Charlotte yelped softly. Emily sat scrunched in next to her, eyes half mocking and half really, actually furious. Her long hazelnut-colored hair rippled down over the gold braid on her jacket. “You were going to tell! Without me! You weren’t even going to ask first!”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You were so!” Emily whispered close to Charlotte’s ear. “I can’t believe it. After all this time! You haven’t any right to decide by yourself, Charlotte! This isn’t just your place; it’s ours, all of us together! It started with four children and twelve wooden soldiers, not one and one! If you want to lay our cards on their table, there has to be a vote. And since Branwell and Anne aren’t here for a Thump Parliament, the least you could do is do a quick straw poll of me.”

  “It’s a hypothesis, Crashey, you stump!” Dr. Home roared. The oily, slick voice was gone, replaced by one that sounded like everyone’s angry uncle at Christmas. Charlotte rather liked the new Dr. Home. “It’s not even my hypothesis! Take it up with Miss Jane; it was her stupid idea in the first place! Don’t you read the journals I send you?”

  “Miss Jane?”

  “Oh, don’t let the fan fool you,” the doctor said ruefully. “It hides a mind like a porcupine. That’s the whole purpose of a fan. She only faints when she needs a moment to think in peace.”

  “But which one’s the primoriginal world, that’s the question,” Crashey proclaimed loudly. He jabbed his finger into the air. “The proper one, the one all the others came fireflying out of in the first place! World Number One.”

  “Maybe none of them,” Emily said suddenly.

  “That’s just it, brother,” Dr. Home replied, wrestling his temper back under control. “We are all of us fireflies, blazing bright in the shadows, and then fading. None of us comes before the other. All are equally proper. No world is copied from another. They are each their own. As complete and unique as a single living heart.”

  “Rubbish! Balderdashnanigans!” Crashey threw his arms about wildly. “You said worlds are being created all the time. That means some of ’em were loitering around in front of the bottle shop before others even got their stockings on! Or are you saying time’s not linear, because if that’s what you’re saying, I’ll box your ears, blind or no blind.”

  “Well, time isn’t linear—”

  “You take that back!” Crashey bellowed, and lunged for his friend Dr. Home. He missed the vivisectionist by yards and stumbled down the stairs, cursing his blindness, Douro for doing it to him, and all of theoretical physics.

  Copenhagen bounded down the length of Bestminster and landed on Crashey in two leaps. His blue, watery paws left puddle-prints on the deck. He could not abide fighting amongst his kittens. Copenhagen thought of everyone in his master’s army as his kittens, though he was sensible enough of men’s pride not to share this opinion. So he snatched Sergeant Crashey up by the scruff of his neck like one of his own salty babies and shook him roughly. How naughty of him, to quarrel with the other kittens! He set him down again and growled a warning. Crashey nodded. He was quite soaked.

  “Fair point, Copey,” he sighed. “Fair point.”

  Wellington’s lion padded over to Charlotte and nuzzled her face. The brief nuzzle knocked off her tricorn hat, drenched her hair, and filled up her shoes with seawater.

  “He likes you,” Wellington said, finally catching up to his steed. It took a few more than two leaps for the Duke to cross the ship from fore to aft. “I suppose the old boy probably knew all along. You wouldn’t have smelled like gold, to his nose.”

  “I like him,” Charlotte said, wringing her brown hair out. “And I suppose he did. You’re not still angry, are you? We did mostly tell the truth. If we’d told all the truth, we’d never have met you, and none of us would ever have managed to get so far, or know so much.”

  Wellington cleared his throat and scratched Copenhagen behind the ears. She purred. “Yes. Well. No need to dwell on it.”

  “You can just pretend I’m gold on the inside, if it makes you feel better.”

  Now Wellington had to clear his throat three or four times before he could get over his embarrassment. “We’ll make landfall in a few hours. I wondered, perhaps, whether Miss Charlotte”—he leaned hard on her name, so that she’d know he preferred her false one—“might join me for a nightcap in t
he Captain’s quarters?”

  Charlotte had no doubt that this meant, not a glass of brandy, but an actual cap to put on her head at night. Probably with a pom on the end.

  “I can play the violin reasonably well. I promise. You won’t be bored. Oh! Your sister may come as well, of course,” the Duke hurried to add.

  Emily waved the idea away. She bent to see if Crashey had hurt his knees tussling over the nature of time. But though Charlotte had arrived at the most extraordinary moment of her life, in which the Duke of Wellington asked her to join him for a nightcap and a spot of music, she did not smile. Charlotte stared out to sea. The lights of Ascension Island glowed silver in the distance.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, shaking her head to clear it.

  “Arthur,” Wellington insisted.

  “Arthur. I’m sorry. I was only thinking of my brother and sister. They’re out there somewhere, alone in the dark. Alone if they’re lucky. They’ve no idea how close we are. They must be so lonely and unhappy. I couldn’t help but think that they won’t have any nightcaps tonight, nor any violin, nor any snuggling lion, nor even any of Gravey’s ragout.”

  “Depriving yourself of small happinesses won’t get us to Gondal one hour faster,” Wellington said gently.

  “I do wish we could get word to them somehow,” Emily sighed. “Oh! Oh, but, Charlotte, we can! Oh, well done, Em! Stealing does work better if you remember what you’ve stolen, you ninny.”

  “What?” Charlotte said sharply. “What have you stolen? You didn’t say a word!”

  “Oh, didn’t I?” Emily blinked innocently at her sister. It served her right.

  “Would you like me to fetch it, miss?” intoned the HMS Bestminster Abbey’s turtle figurehead. Its voice was deep and huge now, as deep and huge as the sea it sailed. Bestminster had had to wait outside the Wildfell Ball for hours and hours with the other Valises. It had felt quite shabby and shamed and after the third hour, quite convinced it had been Lost, after all. When the girls came running out of the gardens with a gang of hollering men behind them, the suitcase’s relief had been so intense it had nearly fallen apart. Bestminster was eager to be useful. It never wanted to have to wait outside again.

  “Oh, yes, thank you, Bestminster!” Emily said, and gave its rail a loving rub.

  The great galleon shuddered and wriggled. Knocking, banging sounds burbled up from belowdecks. The turtle at the prow of the ship puffed out its cheeks like it was gargling a dental rinse, and finally spat a small object up, over the bowsprit, and into Emily’s waiting hands.

  “Good throw!” Emily cried. Crashey and Dr. Home and Wellington and Charlotte agreed. The suitcase-ship delighted in the praise.

  Emily held up her prize. It was a sturdy glass bell with a wooden handle. They could see stars through the surface of it. Emily waited for everyone to be impressed. Charlotte blinked.

  “It’s Mr. Bud’s bell! He used it to ring the Ghost Office! Don’t you see? I’ll just . . . ring up a ghost, and we’ll write a letter to Bran and Anne. Mr. Bud said a ghost can find anyone so long as you’ve got a name and a stamp. And Mr. Tree said there’s loads more ghosts in Gondal than in Glass Town. Urg. I suppose that makes sense now, doesn’t it? Rather sad, though. Rather awful. My God, Charlotte, I hate it! It’s so unfair! I can’t bear it!” Emily fought back tears.

  “They attacked us first,” Wellington said firmly. “They invaded us. Would you prefer we give them all our cannons and muskets, too? If we told them how to make grog, then we would have war everlasting. Napoleon and all his million men, hopping back up again after every battle, ready and starving for more. He will never be satisfied until he’s conquered all the world. At least, this way, we have some hope of peace.”

  Emily dried her eyes. She wanted to argue, but they didn’t have time to discuss the ethics of one-sided immortality just now. “Well . . . however it started . . . it’s awful now. But it means, at least I think it means, that some ghost among all those shades in Gondal will be able to deliver our letter, even to the depths of the Bastille.”

  Emily rung her glass bell. It sounded clear and cold in the night. Despite herself, she whispered to Charlotte: “I wonder if it’ll be Richard again? Or maybe Mary Queen of Scots this time? Or one of the Henries?”

  It took a long while. Everyone stood in silence, waiting for the ghost to arrive. Finally, Emily saw something streaming low over the waves. A thin, pale, bluish wisp, trailing frost and twinkling ice behind it. Wherever it dropped low enough to brush the whitecaps, the seawater froze and shattered. The ghost of a somewhat pretty, somewhat plain girl circled down onto the deck of the ship. She had a round, kind face and curly hair and wore a dress that would not have looked at all odd on a Lady with a bit of money back home in Yorkshire.

  Emily looked at Charlotte expectantly. She’d recognized Richard first, after all. But Charlotte only shrugged.

  “I shall guess,” Emily said. “Queen Jane Gray? She only reigned for nine days, but it wasn’t her fault she got beheaded. But she’s still got her head, so . . . perhaps Ophelia? No, she’s fictional, even if Hamlet’s not . . . I know! Elizabeth Cromwell!”

  “No,” the girl said. “Just Cathy. Nobody specialer than anyone else. Have you got a letter for me?”

  All the men began patting their chests for paper and pen. Emily inched closer to the ghost. She shivered. Frost prickled her arms.

  “Who were you? When you were alive?” Emily said, her voice thick with wonder. “Tell me everything.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t anybody. Just a girl. I lived in a house like girls do. I loved a man once, loved him so much I couldn’t tell the difference between him and me. But he wasn’t the kind of man anyone should love. He took my heart and he took it and pinched it to death. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. So I married someone else and had a child, like girls do. But my heart stayed pinched. Every time I tell the story, people swoon and say it’s dreadfully romantic, but it was horrible and I died halfway through my own story! I don’t know what’s wrong with the living! They think the blackest, most poisonous things are romantic. At least he’s dead now, too. He tries to talk to me but I stick my fingers in my ears until he goes away.”

  “I’m sorry you died,” Emily whispered.

  “So am I,” said Cathy. Her face flushed hard white. “I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy and free! Like you are now.”

  “I don’t feel half-savage and hardy and free,” Emily said. How could she be free when her life was laid out already? They’d rescue Branwell and Anne and go home, and even if, somehow, they managed to take grog with them, even if they managed to wheedle it out of these wooden fists, it wouldn’t stop time. Sooner or later, it would be the Beastliest Day all over again. School would eat her up and then she’d have to be a governess to someone’s spoiled children and work and work until she had no time at all to write all the stories in her head and then what? She didn’t wish she were a girl, she wished she were Branwell. Then she might have hope that something unexpected could happen to her.

  “But you are,” the ghost of Cathy said. “All girls are. We just . . . get stuck sometimes. That’s all. Honeysuckles tangled up in the thorns. At least I’m not stuck anymore.”

  Charlotte wrote out the note quietly on Crashey’s back so that Emily wouldn’t have to. Wellington dug up his personal seal and stamped the corner.

  B & A—

  Don’t worry. We are coming for you. We’ve got Wellington and Lord Byron (don’t ask!) and Crashey and Gravey and the lot with us. There’s nothing to fear. Buck up. Be Brave. You know the rest.

  Look for us at dawn.

  Charlotte & Emily

  P.S. Stop chewing your fingernails, Bran. You, too, Anne.

  Cathy took the letter and promised to listen hard to the earth until she could find the two lost children. She bent and kissed Emily’s cheek with her cold blue-silver lips and disappeared into the
starlit shadows over the depthless sea.

  TWENTY-THREE

  My World Will Shine

  What do you mean ‘a place called England’?” Branwell said crossly.

  He felt sure Victoria was making fun of him somehow. And Anne, as well, but mainly him. Branwell picked up one of Victoria’s dolls and turned it over in his hands. It was a grumpy-looking man with a big white beard. A lead turtle and a little tin goldfinch had gotten stuck to his trousers like burrs picked up on a walk through the woods. Bran shook the doll, but his burrs stuck. He set the fellow down again on an overturned model ship and stared angrily at the map of Verdopolis. His map of Verdopolis.

  “That’s the capital of Glass Town,” Victoria said softly. “I don’t expect I shall ever get to see it, but I have every street memorized. That’s the Tower of All Nations there, see? And the Hall of the Fountain and the Hall of Justice and the Grand Inn of the Genii, which is really just the sweetest and most tender name for a church, when you think about it. Have you ever been to Verdopolis?”

  He goggled at her. Was she making fun? Testing him? But Victoria just looked up at him with wistful, trusting eyes. Her face was all pearl. Her irises the same color as her pupils and whites and eyelids and eyelashes. Branwell could admit she was pretty, but her eyes unsettled him. He glanced meaningfully out the slim church window between the Verdopolis tapestry and the Lake Elseraden one, but she didn’t follow his gaze. She wasn’t allowed to look out windows. Uncle Leon wouldn’t let her. How could anyone be that obedient? Anne certainly wasn’t. It was unnatural. Oh, he realized. Her tower’s facing the wrong way. It’s only the cliff and the valley and the river out there. If she could pick up the place and turn it round, she’d see. That’s the saddest thing since the invention of sad.

  Bran didn’t know why he didn’t tell her the truth, except that the whole business with calling her silly fairy world “England” bruised his national pride. He didn’t like her saying she had Verdopolis memorized. She hadn’t any right to their grand city. She was nothing but Anne’s old doll.